There were matches within her reach, while the little fireplace was not far away, and, sitting just where she was, Ethelyn Grant burned one after another, letters and notes, some directed in schoolboy style, and others showing a manlier hand, as the dates grew more recent and the envelopes bore a more modern and fashionable look.  Over one, the freshest and the last, Ethelyn lingered a moment, her eyes growing dark with passion, and her lips twitching nervously as she read: 

“Boston, April—­

“Dear Ethie:  I reckon mother is right, after all.  She generally is, you know, so we may as well be resigned, and believe it wicked for cousins to marry each other.  Of course I can never like Nettie as I have liked you, and I feel a twinge every time I remember the dear old times.  But what must be must, and there’s no use fretting.  Do you remember old Colonel Markham’s nephew from out West—­the one who wore the short pants and the rusty crape on his hat when he visited his uncle, in Chicopee, some years ago?  I mean the chap who helped you over the fence the time you stole the colonel’s apples.  He has become a member of Congress, and quite a big gun for the West, at least, mother thinks.  He called on her to-day with a message from Mrs. Woodhull, but I did not see him.  He goes up to Chicopee to-morrow, I believe.  He is looking for a wife, they say, and mother thinks it would be a good match for you, as you could go to Washington next winter and queen it over them all.  But don’t, Ethie, don’t for thunder’s sake!  It fairly makes me faint to think of you belonging to another, even though you may never belong to me.  Yours always, Frank.”

There was a dark, defiant look in Ethelyn’s face as she applied the match to this letter, and then watched it blacken and crisp upon the hearth.  How well she remembered the day when she received it—­the dark, dismal April day, when the rain which dropped so fast from the leaden clouds, seemed weeping for her, who could not weep then, so complete was her humiliation, so utter her desolation.  That was not quite three months ago, and so much had happened since then as the result of that M.C.’s visit to Chicopee.  He was there again, this morning, an inmate of the great yellow house, with the large, old-fashioned brass knocker, and, by just putting aside her curtain, Ethelyn could see the very window of the chamber where he slept.  But Ethelyn had other matters in hand, and if she thought at all of that window whose shutters were rarely opened except when Colonel Markham had, as now, an honored guest, it was with a faint shudder of terror, and she went on destroying mementos which were only a mockery of the past.  One little note, the first ever received from Frank, after a, memorable morning in the huckleberry hills, she could not burn.  It was only a line, and, if read by a stranger, would convey no particular meaning; so she laid it aside with the lock of light, soft hair, which clung to her fingers with a kind